Humans? Affraid not

And....to go with an earlier post, it may a 'The Day The Earth Stood Still' (The original) sort of future where space plod tell us to sort our shit our first before we go galavanting off

I'd love to think we could and would boldly go but I fear the human species, once known across the cosmos, would set off alarm bells wherever we went and the pan galactic authoroites would have us with L plates on for eons because, quite frankly, we're lunatics.

It seems to me that we are useing the planets resources at such a rate that we don't have time to develop the technology for light speed travel before those resources are exhausted.
What happens when fossil fuels run out? Flying machines cannot use battery power and I don't think we can grow enough oil bearing plants to fill the fuel gap.
Any aliens out there are probably as grounded as we are!

Star Trek is not science fiction. It's outerspace fantasy. Sometimes even outerspace opera without the singing.

The day we make “contact” will be a seminal moment for humanity to come together for a common goal. I believe some people will remain religious, unfortunately. I dream about a Star Trek-like existence. I think we could get close but our propensity for violence and greed will always keep us from this utopia.

Can we rise above our pettiness? We must.

This may sound strange, coming from one who has no faith in faith, but it has been my experience that, what we might call 'self-fulfilling prophecies' are often little more than choosing what we dwell upon. Humankind faces seemingly insurmountable dilemmas, but we are, or at least can be, the engineers of our own future. We can, if we focus our attention and intention, overcome the pettiness you've highlighted.

We have only two choices, it seems to me. Succumb, or overcome. Is our glass half empty, or half full? Do we see a post-apocalyptic Mad Max version of our 'pale blue dot,' or do we envision a Gene Roddenberry 'united Earth' future?'

It does not matter that we will never reach our ultimate goal. The effort yields its own rewards -Data, Star Trek: The Next Generation

We arnt going to be around that long.

We cannot even live with ourselves as a single human race. We will not accept any other species. Some will claim that they were sent be the devil. Others will claim that they are wearing a costume and it is a conspiracy if they look different than us. Some will never give up the belief that we are god's chosen people, and that we are the center of the universe. We have to learn to live with ourselves first before we can even hope to accept another alien race.

Anything can happen but somethings very unlikely.

I do believe so. That being said, Star Trek is set in post WWW 3 earth... 😣

I'm seeing, at best, a Babylon 5 kind of future. Maybe humans won't kill everyone, maybe we'll get some allies, but I think our species is too selfish and humanocentric to really do well out in the great wide universe.

If we could develop the technology to explore beyond our solar system, we will be awed by what we find.

Is it possible that we could unite for real exploration and discovery? I would like to believe so.

The klingons have not evloved they would kill each other to say their ship is faster.

Possible but not probable.

We would have to do a lot of evolving first. Maybe in another few thousand years if we last that long.

wouldn't that be great--at this point though, we seem to be going backwards

Nope. Humanity, as a whole, is incapable.